Friday, August 23, 2013

Adjusting Exit Polls? Assumptions Make All The Difference (Response to Charmin)

The last post has provoked a strong reaction from Charnin and another on my argument on voter fraud and exit polls. Another response to this is, in 2004 some were claiming voter fraud with Diebold automated voting machines, especially in the state of Ohio. Bush carried the state by about 100,000 votes over Kerry officially. There were other problems in Ohio such as long lines in Democratic precincts that year. If Kerry had won that state he would've won the electoral college while losing the official popular vote margin.

Fast forward to 2012, Ohio is still a big battleground state but Obama barely carried it this time. In the clip above Bush's brain Karl Rove bitterly disagreed with Fox News' own election projection bureau which had just called Ohio for Obama with the same Diebold machines. Is this just Kabuki theater to cover up the fraud? Should Obama have won by a larger margin? Didn't they have these less high tech voting methods in 2000 and before where fraud on a massive scale would be harder to cover up than with today's machines with no paper trail?Richard Charnin may be right in his theories. I am not calling him a liar like Stewart is calling Karl Rove, either to himself or to the world. Stewart is looking for laughs. I believe that he believes his findings. Probability models only show the likelihood of an event. Hard data is needed to back up the predictions and/or claims. I agree that a paper trail in elections is important for protecting against fraud but one must be careful to assume that just because the potential for it exists doesn't prove that the fraud exists.

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About Me

My occupation is a statistician. I tell people it is like "CSI without
dead bodies" because examining a set of data that has been collected is
like doing an autopsy on a deceased person in the sense that I'm trying
to learn what I can from what information is available. Except in this
case the information does not involve gross things. For me the process
can be humorous, scary, but always captivating. I hope you feel the same
way too.
I included a photo of Pinocchio riding a tricycle which I took on a trip
to Rome because it seemed appropriate to the theme of my blog. I will
add a brief translation of my first post in Italian for my relatives
below.
Perche` il mio blog "CSI senza cadavere"? Sono un statistico. Dico che
e` simili a` CSI perche` quando studio una raccolta dei dati, cerco per
la verita` dal passato. In contrario a` CSI, non uso niente nauseante (o
raramente). Per me il processo sarebbe comico, pauroso, ma sempre
affascinante. Spero che sarai d'accordo.